England no longer "swings like a pendulum do" and the "bobbies on bicycles two-by-two" of yore are now corrupt cops in Porsches purchased with the bribes and kickbacks that are the standard currency of Murdoch's News International.

And abruptly all that he was suffering, all that he had just observed, from the night-blooming hedge and the two-by-two love-murmuring humans to the pair like thieves in each other's arms, crystallized into a parable of life enunciated by the day-blooming hibiscus upon which he gazed, now at the end of its day.